Eliza Newlin Carney

Bio:

Eliza Newlin Carney is a senior writer covering political money and election law for CQ Roll Call. Carney writes features, investigative stories and news articles for CQ Weekly. She also writes a Rules of the Game column for Roll Call that analyzes the latest developments in lobbying, political money and ethics. Carney signed on in 2011 as a Roll Call staff writer. She joined the CQ Weekly staff in April 2013.

Carney previously was a contributing editor at National Journal, writing about campaign financing and Washington's influence industry. She was an election law columnist for NationalJournal.com and NationalJournalDaily. She also contributed features and investigative stories to National Journal and Government Executive magazines, among others, and worked as a freelance writer.

Before that Carney spent close to 10 years as a National Journal staff correspondent covering Congress, political money and lobbying. She also wrote about abortion, health care and welfare. Before joining National Journal in 1991, she covered Capitol Hill for States News Service, where her subscribing newspapers included the New York Times and the Evening Sun of Baltimore. She previously worked as a daily newspaper reporter in the Philadelphia area.

Carney has offered commentary on C-SPAN, CNN, National Public Radio and the PBS NewsHour, among others. She also has taught journalism at George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs, and has written a chapter in a book, Abortion Politics in American States (M.E. Sharpe Inc., 1994.)

Carney has a master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and a B.A. from Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pa. Her work has been recognized by the Capital Press Women and the Philadelphia Press Association. She lives in Silver Spring, Md., with her husband, Dan Carney, an editorial writer for USA Today, and their daughter, Elizabeth.

Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s political organization is opening a campaign office for him in Iowa. Ex-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is meeting with major donors and hosting dozens of fundraisers around the country. Hillary Rodham Clinton, former senator, secretary of State and first lady, is quietly hand-picking a team of high-level advisers to run her anticipated White House bid.

What’s in a leadership PAC name? Plenty of dough, as the members who run these personal political action committees have learned. Leadership PACs run by lawmakers pulled in roughly $400 million in the 2014 election cycle, according to a CQ Roll Call analysis of data.

At a private gathering of conservative political donors last year, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell applauded the state of American elections today, which he described as more deregulated than at any point in recent memory.

When Congress moved quietly late last year to permit much larger contributions to the political parties, some experts cast the rules change as, at best, an improvement on the old system, and, at worst, inconsequential.

Dubbed the “billionaire election” by some, these midterms have featured more money than ever spent by the wealthiest Americans and less by small donors. Big-spending outside groups are distilling an already elite donor pool even further, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, and the overall number of individual donors has declined for the first time.

This midterm’s price tag will hit $3.7 billion, according to the latest projection from the Center for Responsive Politics, with outside groups and billionaires playing a larger role than ever while small contributors dwindle in number.

The Senate candidate warned that voters’ voices are being “drowned out” by “third-party special interest groups with unlimited spending capability,” and called on his opponent to help him bar big outside spenders from the race.

Charles and David Koch are best known for their big political spending, but public records show the billionaire industrialists have also invested close to $10 million on lobbying Congress this year, targeting such issues as carbon taxes, renewable fuel standards, greenhouse gas restrictions and campaign financing.

Is the Federal Election Commission a dysfunctional agency deaf to voters fed up with loophole-riddled campaign finance rules? Or is it a newly revived organization making unprecedented moves to invite a wide-ranging public debate over its regulations?

As Bob McDonnell’s lawyers gear up to appeal the former Virginia Governor’s conviction on 11 counts of bribery, conspiracy and extortion, federal prosecutors, legal experts and elected officials around the country are all watching closely.

The emotional debate over free speech versus free political spending, which erupted onto the Senate floor this week, exposes a deep rift on Capitol Hill and at the nation’s leading civil rights group, the American Civil Liberties Union.

Opponents of big money in politics celebrated some small victories lately: A constitutional amendment to curb campaign spending cleared a key Senate committee and was introduced in the House. And a new “super PAC to end all super PACs” raised $5 million in a matter of weeks.

A trove of new public records recently opened up by the Federal Communications Commission sheds light on the ways undisclosed political ads are creating an underground midterm election that’s increasingly hidden from view.

As Senate Democrats gear up for their third in a series of public hearings on the state of campaign finance, Capitol Hill can expect another made-for-TV performance that’s long on political theatrics and short on policy.

The Senate’s Majority Leader, Harry Reid, and its GOP leader, Mitch McConnell, delivered sharply clashing views of the campaign finance system Tuesday, at a Senate hearing on a proposed constitutional amendment to allow Congress to restrict political money.